


I'm Your Fool

by Barkour



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Post-Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 10:08:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3245693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Iron Bull never asked Dorian to stay, but Dorian did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Your Fool

**Author's Note:**

> This is at least 45% [Adri](http://archiveofourown.org/users/radiophile)'s fault.
> 
> The title is from WHAM!'s [Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIgZ7gMze7A), and that's completely my own fault.
> 
> Hope you like fluff!!!

The evening’s festivities had carried well into morning. After all, how often were breaches to the Fade definitively sealed with minimal casualties? 

“Why,” Dorian said, “it’s almost too perfect an ending. Even odds someone’s spiked the ale and we’ll all wind up with crippling hangovers,” but he hadn’t stopped smiling once all evening.

“Aw, Dorian,” the Bull had said, “you relentless optimist,” then he’d pulled Dorian into his lap to see how Dorian liked the Bull’s optimism. Very much, as it turned out. 

His left breast was very warm and the left arm numb; that was the first thing the Bull thought. A sensation of pins, pricking, moved over his skin like brambles. He'd a memory of getting thorns in his hand, but he'd no memory of taking a vine to bed. Finally the Bull resigned to waking. He’d an expectation of having fallen asleep with his shoulder twisted. He made to raise his arm and straighten the joint, and the motion disturbed Dorian. 

Dorian grumbled and rolled more fully on to the Bull’s chest; so his arm was freed. It hung, wavering, in the air. The Bull looked at Dorian. In sleep Dorian’s mouth was slack. He’d made slick a small section of the Bull’s chest. Twice the Bull squeezed his eye shut then opened it again, blinking to clear away the grit of the night. 

The drool remained. So too Dorian. 

The Bull lowered his hand so that it covered Dorian’s bare shoulder. The skin was warm, the muscle beneath at ease. Bone thick. The back of the Bull’s hand was chilled from the draft, come down through the ceiling. He stroked Dorian’s arm to the elbow and then up again, and Dorian pressed his face to the Bull’s shoulder, sighed, and turned up his chin.

Like a vine—the weed-ish vines in Par Vollen that broke apart stones with their embraces and gave only bitter fruit—Dorian had clung to the Bull. Both legs slung over the Bull, the one knee at the Bull’s belly and the other turned in towards the Bull’s knees. He was all of him twisted. Left arm tossed across the Bull’s chest, the hand dangling on the far side, the soft inside crease of his elbow shown to the Bull. Right hand tucked beneath the Bull’s shoulder.

So, wake him up. But why? Wiggling incrementally nearer, the Bull tucked his arm lower, to ease Dorian closer and higher. It was delight transfused the Bull. Like an enchantment. Some weird-ass spell Dorian cast with spit and that—was it a snore? A whistle, so faint in his throat. 

Dorian grumbled again, and the Bull set his teeth against a laugh. A little noise came off his tongue anyway. His nose pulled back: the Bull drew a breath to steady. If he laughed, Dorian would wake like a shot. Sense someone laughing at him and come up ready to gut them for it with the sharp side of his tongue. 

Quickly then. The Bull skimmed, taking in as many of the small things as he could. Like judging a battlefield, only he had but the single Tevinter mage, wrapped as cozily about his side as a well-fed cat in front of a fire. 

Cheeks sleep-soft. The inside corners of his eyes carried gound. A smear of copper dust along his hairline: the remains of the evening’s eye shadow. Hair half a crest, sticking up from his head. The other half was crushed between the Bull’s breast and Dorian’s cheek. 

The Bull caved to temptation and reached with his right thumb to brush the bristling hairs of Dorian’s mustache flat along his lip. His thumb lingered there. He thought of it, kissing Dorian to wake him. Dorian would be warm. Slick, too, as the Bull had evidence. And what would Dorian think of waking to a kiss?

So the Bull lifted his hand to clean the boogers from Dorian’s eyes with his first finger. Delicately with the blunted claw he scraped the grit away. Dorian wrinkled his nose; his eyes moved beneath his eyelids. The Bull winced and flicked the sleep from his finger.

A black lash hung from Dorian’s lid, loosed but not detached. That was another temptation. What had tama’ said of an eyelash falling? Make a promise on it. 

He caved to this too. The Bull pinched the lash between two fingers and tugged. He did so very gently. All the eyelashes came off anyway. 

The Bull said, “The _fuck_ ,” and stared at the strip of eyelashes in his hand. 

Dorian stirred. He rubbed his face upon the Bull’s breast and mumbled something to it, like “What?” That the Bull had scalped his eyelid, Dorian did not care.

“Dorian,” said the Bull. “Do humans shed?”

“Some of us are sleeping,” said Dorian crabbily. “Ask me later.” He stilled. Dorian’s head came up. He squinted at the Bull. “Did you ask if I _shed_?”

The Bull hooked his left arm about Dorian’s neck, to try and hold his head in place. Naturally Dorian disagreed. 

“Just let me see—”

“Do you have any idea how obscene the hour is?”

“It’s not that late,” said the Bull. “You’re just a lazy puss.”

Dorian stopped fussing. His eyes focused on the Bull’s pinched fingers. The Bull had fixed on Dorian’s eyes. The right eye was framed still by thick, dark eyelashes, but the left eye, rather than bared, had a row of stubby, clumped eyelashes on top. 

“What are you doing with my eyelashes?” asked Dorian. Then he pulled away, sitting upright and out of the Bull’s arms. “I slept in them?” he demanded of the Bull.

The Bull, holding the eyelashes, shrugged. “I sleep in mine.”

Dorian felt at his own face with his fingertips, from cheek to his eyelids to his brow. Then he swore, at length.

“Damn,” said the Bull after a moment. “Where you been hiding that dirty mouth?”

“Up my arse,” said Dorian, “along with all Sera’s arrows. Give me that.” He snatched the strip of eyelashes—false eyelashes—from the Bull’s fingers and swung his legs away.

The Bull caught Dorian around the waist and chest and tugged him back. There was no plan to it. He only did it. 

“Bull!” His voice was rough and lower set than usual, not from temper but from a long night of deeply sleeping. “Will you let me go?”

The Bull could be rough of voice too. “Not letting you run off yet.” His palms covered Dorian’s chest, and he tugged Dorian nearer still, so that Dorian’s long, sleek back fit to his breast again. 

“How?” asked Dorian, as though the Bull had offended his intellect. He gestured to the gloriously naked whole of him with eyelashes. “En dishabille? I don’t even know where my trousers are. Or if they’re in one piece.”

Unable to resist, the Bull rested his chin on Dorian’s shoulder and said to his ear, “En déshabillé.” He grinned at Dorian’s snort—grinned broadly as Dorian settled against the Bull. “Your Orlesian could use some work.”

“Ah,” said Dorian. “In the presence of a master, am I?”

The Bull shrugged and laced his fingers together on Dorian’s belly. A little softness met his hands. Dorian was sturdy-built, and he’d vanity to work for it. Fondly, the Bull rubbed his thumb along the suggestion of some 

“I’ve been around.”

“I hadn’t heard,” said Dorian. “Certainly never of—” A yawn interrupted him. Dorian yawned without elegance: a huge, cracking thing. He stuck his legs out straight too as he yawned—and shit, it did go on, like a Hinterlands bear stirring after winter might yawn—and stretched mightily.

“Think you need ice for your jaw,” said the Bull when he had done.

“Of your conquests,” Dorian finished, “if you had any. But I wouldn’t know.” His legs relaxed. He flexed his toes; those popped too. “I never heard of them.”

“You said that already.”

Dorian yawned again, more the cat than the bear, and squinted down his nose at the strip of lashes.

“Did I?”

The Bull had seen some of Dorian like this, in and about camp on wilderness treks without inns and private room. That Dorian was not a morning person, everyone from Minrathous to the Korcari Wilds could attest. He’d snip about the hour and snap about the coffee and snarl at anyone who’d the indecency to be pleasant to him before noon.

All this was new. The Dorian who cracked his toes and his jaw first thing in the morning—that he should be drowsy and snappy-sweet—his hair all a mess and his cheek slacking again as he half-dozed on the Bull’s shoulder: the Bull catalogued it.

As Dorian relaxed into the cradle the Bull had made of his arms for Dorian, his hands dropped to the Bull’s arms. Sleepily he patted the Bull’s wrist. The eyelashes trembled from his finger and then fell to the Bull’s thigh. 

The Bull touched the shortened fingers of his left hand to Dorian’s cheek, beneath his bared eyelid. He made a wondering noise, the Bull did, and then he laughed.

“Falsies, huh?” 

He flicked his middle finger on Dorian’s nose. Dorian turned lidded eyes on the Bull, or the Bull’s wrist which was as far as he could see. 

The Bull teased, “You been holding out on me this whole time.”

At this Dorian jerked upright again; again, he swore, and he pried the Bull’s arms open to make his getaway. 

“What’s the rush?” the Bull protested. He made a perfunctory go of catching Dorian, but his hand only slid off that thick swell of arse. As he abandoned the Bull, Dorian snagged the blanket from the foot of the bed and wrapped it as a toga. 

Regretfully the Bull bid adieu to the dimpled small of Dorian’s back, the wicked jut of his hip, those thighs with their telltale bruises. Adieu, adieu, adieu, to each in turn.

The Bull leaned back against the headboard and continued: “Nothing to do today. Breach is closed. No new missions on the table. Not too cold for you, is it?”

Dorian cracked the ice over the wash basin with the side of his hand then bent to the basin to breathe fire into the water. Steam puffed into his face. His mustache, crushed on the one side and limp on the other, glittered like with dew. 

“A kind question, thank you,” said Dorian. Delicately he peeled the second strip of false eyelashes away. This, he set aside. “Since you’ve asked, I’ll be frank. I’m _freezing_.”

Cupping his hands together to gather water, Dorian began to rinse his face, dampening the skin first. 

“You’re always freezing,” said the Bull. “Even in the Hissing Wastes you said you were cold.”

“You southern barbarians,” Dorian said. “You think a light snow shower is perfect weather for prancing about naked.”

The Bull noted, “You’re prancing about naked,” and Dorian hitched his makeshift robe higher up his chest. “And I’m not a southern barbarian. So disparaging but so wrong.” The Bull tsked sadly. “Par Vollen’s in the north.”

“Very well. A western barbarian. Do you have a towel or a rag?” Dorian frowned at his reflection in the basin. “You must have something useful lying around.”

Sighing, the Bull relinquished the bed to his past. Well, he had to piss.

“One or two,” the Bull allowed, “maybe. How d’you feel about my boxers?” 

Dorian glanced at the Bull with his brow crooked and his eyebrows glistening. The eyeshadow, smeared in his sleep across his brow, glinted. It ought to have been laughable. Somehow it endeared.

“About using them on my face, or that you own any? I’ve never seen them. Or heard of them. Or smelled them.”

The Bull crossed to his dresser of drawers and took out a red cloth. A short sash or a wide ribbon or something. Since the Chargers had hitched on to the Inquisition, the Bull had begun to accumulate stuff, and in gross. He supposed he might have to get rid of the shit in the near future.

“Bull?” asked Dorian.

The Bull looked to his hands. He’d begun to wring the sash between them, throttling the cloth. Smoothing it between his fingers, the Bull cleared his throat.

“I wash my clothes.” He offered Dorian the cloth and, when Dorian had grasped the end, the Bull drew the sash, or ribbon, or whatever, tight and bent to Dorian’s cheek. Just shy of kissing, the Bull stopped. “Sometimes.”

Dorian was not ruffled by the Bull’s teasing. With his wetted, stubby lashes low over his eyes, Dorian looked squarely at the Bull and said, “The smell haunts me.”

The Bull deflated. “You’re no fun in the morning. How come,” he pondered as he went to piss in the pot, “I never knew you weren’t fun in the morning?”

“So sorry not to live up to your expectations,” said Dorian. 

At his tone, amused, the Bull looked over at him. Of all possible things, as he folded the cloth over into thirds, Dorian was smiling. He dampened the end of the cloth in the warmed water; and he was smiling.

It was a very Dorian smile, hardly noticeable if you didn’t know what to look for: but the teeniest crook of his mouth. A fractional wrinkling at his eye. Then Dorian began scrubbing at his eyelids and the details were lost.

The Bull followed his intuition. At his approach, Dorian—cloth still at his eyes—fumbled one-handed for a drinking cup, scooped it in the basin, and set it on the edge of the little table. The cup clicked on the wood. Dorian pointed to it.

“Aw, hey,” said the Bull, “thanks. How’d you know I was thirsty?” He dunked his fingers in the cup, one at a time, and swirled.

“Not out of that cup,” muttered Dorian, then, rubbing at his cheek, he caught the Bull’s eye. “Don’t—”

The Bull flicked his fingers, and water droplets dotted Dorian’s shoulder, his neck, his crumpling face. Victory was fleeting. Twisting the cloth quickly in his hand, Dorian snapped the Bull across the chest with it. Yelping, and laughing too, the Bull retreated, hands at his side in a defensive arrangement as Dorian prepared for another strike. 

“Put something on,” Dorian said. “You’ll catch a chill.”

“Mm,” said the Bull. “All part of my plan. Get you to nurse me back to health.” He lowered his hands.

Dorian returned to cleaning his nose, and the Bull edged nearer again. Tactically it seemed wise to go about the other way. Come up on the far side. 

“Oh, no. You devious bastard,” said Dorian. “And anyway, I’m not a healer.”

“You always make me feel better,” said the Bull, leaning into Dorian’s back. “With that magic touch. Your words, not mine. Before you start moaning.”

“No,” said Dorian, setting the cloth aside, “no moaning. It’s too—” Another yawn. He batted at it with the back of his hand, but it persisted.

The Bull leaned sideways and tipped his head, to consider Dorian in profile, at this hour of the day. Clean-scrubbed, yes, and he’d that look about him of a good night’s sleep, that fresh-faced sort of glow. Fine lines, still, around his eyes, and at his temple, amidst the messy black hairs… The Bull traced the grey hair with his fingertip.

“Too early,” Dorian finished. 

The Bull said, “You done?” and carded his fingers back through Dorian’s hair, brushing out some small snarls.

Critically Dorian examined his reflection. He pulled his jaw down, to tug his nose out, and considered it, and then he clicked his tongue. The Bull took this as a yes. His hand dropped between Dorian’s shoulder. He bent, and he hefted Dorian into his arms.

“What the hell are you doing!” Dorian threw his arm around the Bull’s neck and then whacked him.

“Taking you back to bed,” said the Bull, and he winked showily at Dorian. “Isn’t that what you want? Curl up like a little kitty where it’s nice and hot?”

“I have feet,” said Dorian, “and legs. They even work, when I get to use them. And what’s this kitty stuff about?”

“That’s easy,” said the Bull as he dropped Dorian, still as neatly wrapped in the blanket as a sausage, onto the bed. “You were purring. It’s what woke me up.”

Dorian said, “I did no such thing,” and reached for a pillow.

“Purring, and drooling, too,” the Bull said. He pointed to his breast. “See? Right there.”

“All I see is you showing off your chest again.”

The Bull stepped easily onto the bed, a knee to either side of Dorian’s thighs. 

“Look closer.”

“Any closer and I’d suffocate.” But Dorian did allow a cursory glance. “That could be anything. Water. You did just wash your hands.”

“Drool,” said the Bull. “I know I’m a big, juicy, tantalizing side of beef, Dorian—”

“Oh, god,” said Dorian.

“I’m not just some meat for you to chew on.”

“Oh?” asked Dorian. “And what are you?”

The Bull slipped his hands under Dorian’s back, to unhook the blanket as Dorian had wound it. 

“Curious,” said the Bull.

Dorian covered his mouth with his hand again and arched, that the Bull could tug the blanket free of him. For a moment Dorian was naked, thoroughly bared before and to the Bull. A man in his late thirties with eyelashes much shorter than the Bull had previously thought; and he was yawning behind his hand and moving, now that the Bull had freed his legs, to claim most of the Bull’s bed.

“Curious?” asked Dorian. “About what?” He took both the Bull’s pillows and wedged them beneath his head. “How it is someone as inarguably wonderful as myself has wound up in your bed?”

He was teasing. The edge of it—expertly masked, the Bull gave him that—was directed at Dorian. The Bull doubted Dorian even realized he did it. When he said inarguably, he meant _here’s where you laugh and tell me I’m wrong_.

The Bull left off straddling Dorian to kneel beside him on the bed, to shake the blanket out and then lay it over him. Dorian, fingers at his mouth, blinked owlishly. The Bull smoothed the blanket over Dorian’s chest. His hand rested on Dorian’s collar, his thumb in the bow at the center of the clavicle. 

He’d such a strong chest, for a human; a solid chest. Dorian breathed easily. He did it freely. Even under the weight of the Bull’s hand he did so.

“Something like that,” said the Bull. 

Then he reached up and tweaked Dorian’s nose, just the tip. Dorian jerked away, touching his nose.

“Savage.” He looked at the Bull—their gazes met—then Dorian looked to the blanket, picking at some minute wrinkle in it. “At least you’ve sense enough to appreciate charity.”

The Bull said, “You’re too generous,” and he flicked at Dorian’s cheek, short of his mole.

“The one true flaw in my character,” said Dorian dryly. “My boundless generosity. Far too forgiving. That’s what they all say. Dorian, how can you be so kind? Where do you find such reserves of patience and understanding?”

“Hm,” said the Bull. He tested the thin lines at the corner of Dorian’s eye with a short claw. “And what do you tell them?”

“I tell them,” said Dorian, “they have no business talking to me, and if they ask again I tell them ‘up my arse.’”

The Bull laughed and cupped Dorian’s cheeks in his palms. “You’re carrying too much up there, Dorian. All it’ll take is one bad oyster and…”

Loudly Dorian said, “Yes, thank you.” 

“Just saying,” said the Bull. “Pretty embarrassing if all that crap fell out.”

Dorian ignored this. “I really should invest in a decent messenger bag. Something with enough space for all my charitable intentions.”

“And Sera’s arrows.”

“And Sera’s arrows.” Dorian eyed the Bull, still smiling down at him. “What? What is it?” His fingers flew to his face, and Dorian felt at his nose, his eyelids. Those meager eyelashes rose then fell again then rose halfway as Dorian peeked at the Bull.

With the side of his thumb the Bull followed the ridge of bone that defined Dorian’s right cheek. He did this without haste. Soon he was following instead the curve of Dorian’s eye, till the Bull’s thumb rested against his nose. 

“Hey, Dorian,” said the Bull.

Dorian swallowed. He pursed his lips when he’d done and tried for sharpness. “What?”

Again the Bull stroked his cheek, retracing the path he’d taken. Lowly he said, “You’ve never stayed over before.”

The blanket separated them. Without fuss, Dorian curled his hand about the Bull’s arm, near to his elbow. His eyes were dark, the hazel more brown now than grey, and they were fixed on the Bull. 

“Haven’t I?” asked Dorian lightly.

The Bull said, “No.” He traced the shape of Dorian’s mouth then.

“Well,” said Dorian, with the Bull’s thumb on his lips. 

His hand tightened about the Bull’s arm. Palm too small and fingers too short to encircle it, really. Nevertheless he held the Bull so that the Bull could not move from him, and Dorian leaned up from the pillows to kiss the Bull once. His breath was sour from the night, his lips dry. The Bull kissed him back.

Dorian withdrew, though his hands remained, the one at the Bull’s arm and the other now grasping a horn. 

“So,” said the Bull.

“So,” said Dorian.

“You stayed,” said the Bull. “Couldn’t find your trousers?”

Dorian closed his eyes and asked, pained, “Do I have to say it?”

The Bull said, “No,” and he meant it. 

From deep in his gut, Dorian sighed. “I stayed,” he said, “because I wanted to stay.”

The Bull smiled. His eye hurt with it. “That why?” he asked. “Here I thought you were just hungry for a side of beef.”

Dorian turned his face away to complain. “This is what I deserve. You open your heart up to someone, and what do you get? Jokes. Bad jokes.”

The Bull said, “Hey, Dorian.”

“What now?” Only just, Dorian turned back: the side of his nose showed; the curve of his jaw. “If you’re going to make a joke about steak juices—” 

That was as far he got. Cupping that curve of jaw, the Bull tipped Dorian’s head and kissed him and lingered, like this. Whatever else Dorian had meant to say passed between the Bull’s teeth as a breath. Softly the Bull pulled on Dorian’s lips, and again Dorian sighed.

The Bull leaned out of the kiss. Dorian remained there, lips yet turned out, and the Bull, so tempted, kissed him once more, this in passing. Fine wrinkles had gathered between Dorian’s eyebrows.

“Good morning,” said the Bull again.

Dorian’s eyes fluttered shut. His mouth pursed; he wiggled his lips near to his nose and then huffed.

“Why do you do this?” He tightened his grip on the Bull’s horn, tugging him near even as he complained. Dorian took another kiss from the Bull and went on. “Why do you insist on being the most possible you at every moment? You make it so difficult to, to—”

“To what?” the Bull, grinning, asked him. “Resist my powerful, sculpted physique?”

“To not want to stay,” said Dorian.

The Bull ran his knuckles along Dorian’s jaw. “And you want to stay.”

Dorian took his hand from the Bull’s shoulder, to grasp both his horns. His fingers moved idly, rubbing at the base of each of the Bull’s horns. The Bull hadn’t itched on his pate till Dorian began to scratch. 

“Well,” said Dorian, “not all day.” His thumbs dug into the horn roots, and the Bull swallowed a groan. “Aginas wants to speak with everyone later. Or everyone who’s left.”

“Boss does?” The Bull looked at Dorian’s wrists. Tendons flexing. How the tension ran down his arms to his elbows. “Guess with the breach closed there’s not much need for an Inquisition.”

To not want to stay. That was what Dorian had said. If he offered Dorian a place in the Chargers, thought the Bull. Dorian prized his independence, and the Bull had his rule about fraternizing— 

Dorian left off the Bull’s horns.

“Not in this form,” he said, examining his palms. “I don’t expect it will continue as such. But they certainly aren’t calling to disband it.” Hands deemed clean, Dorian rested them artfully low on his chest, fingers curled. “Josephine thinks it has merit. A separate investigative party, not sworn to any one nation or alliance.”

The Bull said, “And the boss—”

“Well, you know Aginas.” Dorian rolled his eyes but with fondness. “He wouldn’t command everyone to agree to stay on. He wants to sit us all down in a circle and hold hands and talk about what our plans are for the future.”

The Bull set his elbow down beside Dorian and tipped his head, in as much as his horns might allow. As the Bull considered the far wall, Dorian stretched again, hugely. Finally he settled and in his settling fitted to the Bull as the Bull was curved, half-about Dorian.

He glanced to Dorian, morning lazy and sinking against the Bull. Another eyelash loose on his cheek, a short one. The Bull reached to pick it from Dorian. It came easily. Dorian blinked. His hands were folded upon his belly again. 

The Bull held the lash on his thumb. “And what are your plans for the future?”

“The usual,” said Dorian. He looked at the Bull, looking to the eyelash set in the coarse whorls of his thumb’s print. “Acclaim throughout the nations for my innovations in the practical applications of theoretical magics. An obscenely _im_ practical wardrobe. Fabulous wealth, of course.”

The Bull arched his brow. “And Tevinter. All those wrongs you swore you meant to right? Something about courtly corruptions and… What was it again, Pavus?”

“Decadence, unweaned pride, material greed, all the sins of my people, yes,” said Dorian dryly. Then the trace of a smile in his mouth eased. His thumbs twiddled in the thick hair of his chest and gut. “Events of late, with the Inquisition, have led me to consider that I might not be…” He lifted a hand to waft it. “Perhaps there are still a few things I ought to learn before my triumphant return from this exile.”

The Bull breathed. He pinched finger to thumb, to hold the eyelash safe.

“Aginas got to you too, huh,” he said. “Know what he said to me after that business on the Storm Coast went south?”

“Tell me anyway,” said Dorian.

“Something like…” The Bull took a shot at Aginas’ scratchy, high voice: “‘Qun or no Qun, you’re still the Iron fucking Bull. Guess you just have to figure out what that means now.’”

Dorian said, “I very much doubt that our dear moping Inquisitor called you ‘the Iron fucking Bull,’” and stroked with three fingers the length of the Bull’s wrist, his arm to his elbow, set upon his thick hip.

“Well, whatever elfy thing he might’ve said,” said the Bull. “He meant that.”

“How comforting to know I share this crisis of purpose with the Iron fucking Bull,” said Dorian. 

His hand slipped from the Bull’s elbow, to rest on his belly. Dorian’s eyelids drooped. His palm steady and his fingers folding, he rubbed small circles into the Bull’s broad gut with his knuckles.

“So what are your plans?”

He’d every semblance of disconcern. Perhaps the Bull might have believed him, if Dorian’s hand were not so warm or his touch so gentle. One by one Dorian unfurled his fingers and pressed them into the fat and the muscle as if to pin the Bull beneath his hand.

I’d have let you go if that’s what you wanted, thought the Bull; and now he did not have to. He’d have done it. 

“That,” said the Bull, “is up to the boss. If he decides he wants to keep the Chargers on. For a modest contractual fee.”

“And you as the Charger’s chief have no say in it,” said Dorian.

The Bull scratched at his chest, mindful of the lash he held.

“It’s good money,” he said after thinking. “And the boss, he’s got a hell of a talent for picking out fun gigs. Plus it’s not so bad having…” He gestured, encompassing, and Dorian, encompassed, tilted his head to one side in question. “All this to come back to.”

Dorian smoothed his hand up the breadth of the Bull’s belly, to his chest. The arch to Dorian’s brow smoothed too. His hand was warm now on the Bull’s skin. His fingers fanned. He contemplated the Bull’s collarbone between them.

“Yes,” he said, drawing it out. “I suppose there is a … certain appeal. To having something to come back to. A place to call home. For a time.”

Make a promise on it. That was what Tama’ had said. Make a promise and keep it. 

The Bull leaned over Dorian. He covered Dorian’s hand on his chest; he held it there, with his own fingers splayed across Dorian’s wrist.

Dorian cleared his throat then asked gruffly, “What? Did I miss a spot?” and stuck up his chin to invite the Bull’s inspection.

In Seheron grew a fruit-bearing vine, like a sort considered in Par Vollen as a weed for its habit of clinging to stone faces. But in the contested lands, they cultured the vine. It had prickles as protection, too, in hot Seheron: long, sharp teeth that hooked in the flesh. 

He’d grabbed such a vine early in his assignment, meaning to yank it free of a stone walkway, and got a palm full of green thorns for his troubles. The Karashok laughed at him for it.

“So hungry? The berries aren’t worth it.”

“The Viddathari will cut it from the stones later.”

“D’you know,” said third Karashok, “some of the bas grow it on purpose. For looks!”

They’d all laughed at that, the Bull with them. Hissrad then. He hadn’t known then—not Hissrad—that on Seheron the berries grew not bitter as they did in Par Vollen, but sweet. 

“Well, I hate to disappoint,” said Dorian, and the Bull stirred. “But if you’re trying to intimidate me with this looming, it isn’t working. I know all your terrible, embarrassing secrets.” 

“Not all of them,” said the Bull, but he thought, still, of those vines, and those thorns, and the cracks the vines made in the stones.

“Name one I don’t already know,” Dorian said. 

The Bull made a show of thinking. “My favorite color’s pink.”

Dorian pinched the Bull’s chest, and the Bull feigned wincing.

“I already know that one. Name another.”

Seheron was far away, growing farther, and Dorian was very near: Dorian with his eyes screwed up in distaste for the hour, Dorian with his hand on the Bull’s breast. He wondered why it was the world was somehow more solid now than before.

The Bull said, “You tell me one first.”

“I have no secrets,” said Dorian, “I abhor secrets. The first thing you should know about me is I am always forthcoming about myself. Honesty, that’s my credo.”

“Falsies, huh,” said the Bull, and he brushed at Dorian’s cheek with his first finger. The loose eyelash fell to Dorian’s jaw.

“If you thought they were real, that’s your own fault,” said Dorian. “Why should I be ashamed to use a few tricks to enhance my remarkable natural beauty?” 

They were wrong, the Bull thought. He was surprised at how easily he thought this. Thorns, cracked stones. The berries were worth a few stings.

“Nothing wrong with that,” the Bull agreed. He closed his hand around Dorian’s wrist. “So. Home. This your way of asking me if I wanna settle down? Tend house?”

This startled Dorian into a laugh: a cackle, really. The Bull grinned at the sound of it, pealing.

“Imagine!” said Dorian. “The Iron Bull in an apron! With a little featherduster!”

“Hey,” said the Bull, “don’t knock housewives.”

“Believe me,” Dorian said, “I’ve no interest in knocking housewives.”

Well, and what was home? He guessed Aginas would say that was also something the Bull had to figure out. The rest of the day was waiting for the Bull: breakfast, going over things with the Chargers, the future of the Inquisition in the afternoon; and Dorian, too, throughout the day. 

He could ask Dorian to stay. He could. The Bull thought maybe he didn’t need to ask a thing like that.

“Besides,” Dorian was saying, “it’s not as if we’re that serious,” but however cavalier his tone, there was no mistaking those thinning lips.

The Bull, still holding on to Dorian’s wrist, reclined on his back. Dorian came with him, and the uncertainty faded as he sprawled half upon the Bull.

“Damn,” said the Bull, “and I even got the apron picked out.”

The line of Dorian’s shoulders gentled from a squared thing to something rounded. “Not pink.”

“Hell, yes, pink,” said the Bull.

“If you ever buy a pink apron, I’m burning it in front of you,” Dorian said.

The Bull flicked a finger along Dorian’s jaw, scattering that eyelash away for good.

“Marriage is all about compromise, Dorian. Can’t make it work if you’re not willing to put in the work. Meet me halfway.”

“We could absolutely make it work,” Dorian said, “if you were willing to put in the work to agree with me that a pink apron has no place in a kitchen.”

“Good thing I didn’t propose,” said the Bull.

Dorian folded his hands together on top of the Bull’s chest and then set his chin on top of his hands. His eyelids were drooping again, not with ardor but that lingering sleepiness. Carefully the Bull reached for the blanket, to tug it over them.

“Can you even imagine it?” asked Dorian, looking absently to the headboard. “We’d one or the other be dead before my grandmother stopped swooning.”

Make a promise and keep it. The Bull always kept his promises. 

“Nah,” said the Bull. He tucked the blanket about Dorian’s shoulders then let his hand settle there upon Dorian’s back, steady between his shoulders. “You comfortable?”

“Whatever bastard invented mornings ought to be burned at the stake,” said Dorian, and he leaned forward to kiss the Bull just once, as if to say, at last, good morning.


End file.
